Worst To Best: Movie Board Games

May the odds be ever in your favour

The Mask 3D Board Game

The Board Game: Race around the track and retrieve all of the items Stanley Ipkiss lost during his whirlwind Mask transformation. And while you’re at it, return his stolen cashish to the bank.

Why It’s No Fun: Relying entirely on the outcome of what’s rolled, no amount of gaming experience will assist you. Especially as whoever lands on the Mask square can pretty much do what they want and ignore the rules.

Worst Detail: The 3-D board appears to be an empty pizza box with a racetrack crayoned on by five-year old.

Left Behind

The Board Game: A fundamentalist game based upon a hypothetical rapture, Left Behind sounds like the worst case scenario for playtime at sunday school. The first round sees players answer questions, and if they bluff? They get left behind. Nice.

Why It’s No Fun: It’s pretty much a roll the dice and hope for the best outcome kinda deal. Which, while utterly dull, is rather fitting for a game about rapture.

Worst Detail: The confession cards are almost guaranteed to make the atmosphere very awkward, very quickly with examples such as: “What is the most awful thing you ever did to hurt another human being?” and "The cops came to your house once. Why were they really there?"

The Incredible Hulk: 3D Rampage Game

The Board Game: Whizz round collecting pieces for a gamma radiation probe from the lab to restore The Hulk back to his Bruce Banner persona.

Why It’s No Fun: The game plays out under constant threat of everyone’s pieces being disrupted by the board’s “Rage-o-matic shaking mechanism.” Which means after carefully constructing the 3-D elements, all the pieces scatter across a wide area leading to the entire game being smashed beneath your fists in frustration. Quite fitting, really.

Worst Detail: The box illustrations of The Hulk resemble Chet from Weird Science when he’s turned into a massive turd.

Small Soldiers: Big Battle Game

The Board Game: A tedious riff on the 1998 mini-commando kids flick, Small Soldiers: Big Battle is the Ronseal of movie board games. You spin a spinner, roll the dice, and take your opponent’s men.

Why It’s No Fun: Each turn requires the player to load up a skateboard catapult and aim at the board. Whichever players are knocked down are eliminated from the game. That’s pretty much it.

Worst Detail: A game designer with a keen sense of irony, the “small soldier” miniatures used are about the size of action figures.

The Wizard Of Oz

The Board Game: Twenty-five years after The Wizard Of Oz was released, what with Blu-ray special editions a thing of the future, the only option for celebration was roping in the least imaginative people available to design THIS game.

Why It’s No Fun: Players will spend untold energy on rolling dice to get from one end of the board to the other so Dorothy can arrive home.

With every turn moving you back and forth, while trying to bag a magic card, you’ll feel as if you’re engaged in a torturous tango.

Irritation should set in within ten minutes.

Worst Detail: The Wicked Witch’s shrieking green face is replaced with a peachy-coloured one. Not very canon, is it?

Gone With The Wind

The Board Game: Not one, not two, but EIGHT games in total are included in the box. It’s a trivia game, it’s a playing card game, it’s got playing pawns.

Heck, this game is so ambitious it’s got it’s own currency. Although we’re buggered if we know how it works into the actual gameplay.

Why It’s No Fun: You’ll be tuckered out and reaching for anything sugar-loaded just from reading the dense tome-like instructions.

Worst Detail: One of the additional games is called Carpetbagger. Oh wait, maybe that’s the best detail.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The Board Game: Based on the third installment in The Twilight Saga , the Eclipse game requires players to gather up scene cards and take turns battling the newborn army.

Why It's No fun: It rewards its players for possessing a wealthier knowledge of Twilight than an RPattz groupie. ‘Nuff said.

Worst Detail: It lasts an hour.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark

The Board Game: While you may have secretly been hoping that a charismatic daredevil like good ole Indy would’ve been treated to a crackin’ board game, we’re gonna have to disappoint you. A few goes around the board, and ooh look, game’s over.

Why It’s No Fun: The object is to collect four cards of the same colour; Marion, Ra, Imam and Map Room. That’s it.

You’d expect the aim to at least pretend to hover some sort of high stakes dilemma over its players as happens to Indy in the flick. And to top it off, you’re not even allowed to clutch a tiny plastic ark to signify a win?!

Worst Detail: The playing pieces are recycled pawn fodder which could’ve been nabbed from any other Parker Brothers game. Fagins.

Terminator 2

The Board Game: It still fetches around £25 at online auctions but don’t be fooled. The Terminator 2 board game’ll have you on your knees sobbing, wondering why you smashed your piggy bank to cover the shipping costs.

Why It’s No Fun: Like most of the worst games, it suffers from dice rolling fatigue. The game’s final moments ruin any previous momentum, with a monotonous series of turns trying to roll the exact number required to shove the T-1000 into the molten steel.

Worst Detail: None of the board imagery corresponds to anything that’s happening in the game.

Wayne's World VCR Board Game

The Board Game: Part of a short-lived stint of VCR-board game hybrids, the Wayne’s World edition makes minimal effort in paying any attention to a worthwhile tabletop game. Spin a spinner, move your piece, grab a Babe or Hunk piece, answer trivia questions. Yawn.

Why It’s No Fun: When the best part involves ditching the board and watching 45 minutes of previously unseen Wayne and Garth footage... may as well pop the film on and shove the game in the bin.

Worst Detail: You need a functioning VCR. Who’s got one of those anymore?